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Game Title: Call of Duty 2 Big Red One
Platform: PlayStation 2
Developer: Treyarch
Publisher: Activision
Genre: First Person Shooter
Age Rating: BBFC: 15+
Release Date: 18th November 2005 (Europe)
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Game Score: 7.0/10
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Summery:
Big Red One's mission in World War II is a decently handled campaign but lost plenty along the way.
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Call of Duty 2 Big Red One is a side story game to the actual Call of Duty 2 game for those who can't afford to move onto the XBox 360 or upgrade their PC's at the time. As such it's exclusively released on the PlayStation 2, Gamecube and the original XBox consoles.
Instead of actually following between American, British and Russians like in the original games this game focuses on a single campaign and that being the Americans. You play as a nameless soldier of the American's Army division called the Big Red One who have their involvements in the war. The game follows the squad through some of the locations fought in World War II. These include the invasion and liberation of North Africa, the invasion of Sicily, the landing on Omaha Beach and the snowy areas in Germany. The story is told through either during gameplay where each of the characters give out orders to keep you on your way or through cutscenes that detail the events happened in World War II which has voiceover from Mark Hamill. You'll also notice the voice talents of HBO's miniseries Band of Brothers including Michael Cudlitz and James Madio and they voiced very well especially at later points where the tension builds up.
Big Red One has the player going through 14 of the game's missions fighting waves of enemies with various World War II weapons you can get your hands on. Through M1 Grands, Thompsons, Kar88 rifles, MP40s and so forth and they have been faithfully modelled into the game and each are quite impactful especially the Thompson machine guns. Like in other Call of Duty games you can only carry two weapons at a time so you'll have to replace one of your empty weapons if necessary. The controls work the same as previous Call Of Duty games allowing you to aim down the sight of your gun, melee and use grenades.
You also have to complete objectives in order to move onward. These involve standing your ground against waves of enemies, destroying enemy vehicles and mortars and activating switches. There are also missions where you get to control a vehicle like ships and tanks and they do a good job of breaking up the tedium plus they are really enjoyable.
Since the actual Call of Duty 2 game was released at that time Big Red One is a reasonable looking game for the PlayStation 2. The gun models are well detailed and the character models are animated believably. All the various weather effects like one area you're going through trenches in the rain and also the snowy filled fields have snow pouring down are rather cool especially the explosion effects. The sound composed have a lot of great tunes in them the weapons sound very meaty.
The thing that really lets Call of Duty 2 Big Red One down is the difficulty. Instead of using the health regeneration system from the actual Call of Duty 2 you are back to the fixed health bar which isn't a bad thing. However some of the stages get frustratingly hard, some areas throw respawning enemies that force you to keep going forward and also in some areas the amount of enemies that can be firing at you is just insane. There can be dozens of enemies shooting at you relentlessly and you can easily end up with cheap deaths, the worst are the enemies with machine guns which can easily knock off tons of your health and worse enemies that use turrets. There is also no indicator where enemy grenades came from either so that's another thing to avoid, some of the areas leave very little cover for player making you a big target and there are times you'll take hits from all angles and combined with the amount of enemies you'll end up fighting can make later stages just annoying. There is very little you can do about, you just have to spend dozens of minutes memorizing where the enemies are coming from and picking up as many medikits as possible to heal you. You do have allies that accompany you on every mission but they are about as useful as bricks because they just stand around getting shot and also get in the way all the time leaving you to do all the work. They also do such a terrible job shooting back at the enemies cause they spend their time shooting at the walls. Even on the easier difficulty settings you're still going to die frequently.
Another issue I do have with the game is the frame rate, for the most part it runs at a stable 25 fps but however when there is plenty going on the frame rate drops down considerably and it makes the game a little tough to keep up. Combined with already hard difficulty this can also make the game challenging for the wrong reasons.
Overall though the campaign will last a few hours before you reach the conclusion but if you deal with the issues with the gameplay and framerate issues you are in for a reasonably fun campaign even if it is not as enjoyable or memorable as the first ever Call Of Duty game. Sony cancelled the online play on PS2 games so there is little reason to replay it again after you beat the game once, not even for multiplayer unless you got friends who wants to . At least in second hand stores they are selling the game for a cheap price so if you love World War II shooters this is just another passible entry for fans of the franchise, just note that it is inferior to the actual Call of Duty sequel in many ways and it just hasn't aged all that well. At least the Big Red One's mission in World War II was handled even if has lost plenty along the way.
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The Good Points:
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1. Great historical facts and characters
2. Enjoyable vehicle sections
3. Really good looking and sounding
The Bad Points:
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1. Can be frustratingly difficult at times
2. Frame rate issues
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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